A random response to a single question on Wednesday morning at Sydney airport engulfed the news cycle and gave the opposition some welcome distraction
On Wednesday morning, standing in a hangar at Sydney airport, surrounded by returning Olympians and with a green-and-gold scarf around his neck, the opposition leader launched a blistering dual attack on people from Gaza who’d been granted visas for Australia and on the Albanese government that issued them.
saying Australia shouldn’t prioritise people from Gaza who supported Hamas – a listed terrorist organisation – because their presence could damage social cohesion.When parliament returned on Monday from its five-week hiatus, Dutton didn’t take up the cause. The opposition’s themes in House of Representatives question time were the cost of living, the government’s broken makarrata promise and the activities of the CFMEU. There were no questions about Gaza visas.
“Well, I just think every Australian would be shocked to think the government’s bringing in people from a war zone and that Asio is not conducting checks and searches on these people,” Dutton responded. He went on to say that applicants from Gaza should be subjected to biometric tests – something Burgess had explained several days earlier were only useful if those being tested were already on agencies’ radar and registered on a database.
In the speech that followed, he accused the government of “an egregious breach” of the nation’s interests and of a change of policy in allowing people from Gaza to enter Australia on visitor visas. Never mind that it wasn’t a change of policy – successive governments have often issued visitor visas in emergency circumstances, the kind on which Australian citizens can bring Grandma in from abroad
At the last NSW local government elections, Liberal candidates could lodge their own forms but this time the party had decided to do it centrally and online. The system was “clunky”, according to one insider, and it turned out that each application was taking up to 25 minutes.Each week our editors select five of the most interesting, entertaining and thoughtful reads published by Guardian Australia and our international colleagues.
This is not the first huge administrative blunder to occur recently. Ahead of last year’s byelection in the southern Sydney seat of Cook, caused by Scott Morrison’s retirement, it transpires that the state directorate forgot to send out postal vote ballot papers. Richard Shields kept his job.
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